


While I'm Listening

by Corinna



Category: Glee
Genre: Aftermath, Episode: s04e18 Shooting Star, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-27
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-16 00:11:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corinna/pseuds/Corinna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Rachel? Do you think I’m easy to talk to?”</p><p>Spoilers through 4x18 ("Shooting Star")</p>
            </blockquote>





	While I'm Listening

Rachel’s sobbing when she comes into the living room, but that’s hardly unusual: Rachel’s always sobbing about something. “Kurt. Oh, my God, Kurt.”

“Yes, Rachel?” He stays where he is on the floor, focused on applying the top coat. Home pedicures are a bitch.

She sits down across from him, composing herself into something like dignity. “Kurt, listen to me. There’s bad news.”

His first thought is _Dad_ , but that’s just ridiculous, she wouldn’t know anything before he did, right? He screws the lid back on the top coat jar and untangles himself into a comfortable seat. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s — there was a shooting at McKinley.”

His chest goes tight and he can barely ask. “What happened?”

“I don’t know: it _just_ happened. People are all over Twitter about it. The police are there.”

“Where — is everyone okay?”

She starts crying again. “I don’t know. No one’s saying.”

He opens his arms and pulls her in for a hug, tucking his feet safely to the side as much as he can. “Shh. It’ll be okay, Rach. The police are taking care of it. Everyone’s going to be fine.” The clock across the living room catches his eye: 4:15.  It’s Thursday, glee club practice: all their friends would have been staying after school to rehearse. All their — “Everyone’s fine,” he says a little more firmly. “I just know it.”

By the time Rachel’s ready to check social media again, the school’s been evacuated. No gun or shooter found, but no one’s hurt either. The relief is dizzying, and then suddenly they’re exhausted. They need to get out of the apartment, away from all the screens giving them news from Lima.

Kurt takes command, since Rachel’s still looking a little shaky. He decides they’re splurging on an early dinner at Roberta’s, the best hipster restaurant in Bushwick. He texts Santana to tell her where to meet them, and goes into his room to find a pair of shoes. His phone’s still in its dock: no calls, no messages.

He’s managed to keep it together for Rachel so far, but as soon as he thinks about it, he has to check Facebook. Blaine’s already posted, and he hates how relieved he feels to see that stupid familiar icon, Blaine’s face half-hidden under a gray fedora.

 **Blaine Anderson**  
Crazy day at McKinley - so grateful everyone is OK!

There are already 20 likes. Kurt thinks about adding a comment, thinks about everyone they know reading it, and just hits Like instead.

\- - - - -

They go to dinner, and Kurt will be paying for that pizza in his budget and his workouts and his skin care for days, but he can’t bring himself to care. He even takes the last slice of Rachel’s vegan pie, covered in onion and mushrooms, when she can’t finish it herself. On the way home, Kurt buys a pint of chocolate-chip cookie-dough ice cream, which he ends up sharing with Santana on the couch. They watch _The Princess Diaries_ and curl up around each other. They really don’t talk about it.

His phone sits in his pocket, but the only call he gets all night is from his dad.

He goes to sleep with the phone in his hand, just in case.

\- - - - -

It’s noon the next day, and he still hasn’t heard from Blaine, although Blaine has posted two more times on Facebook. He tells himself it’s fine: they’re just friends now, of course he’s not at the top of Blaine’s list of people to call. But some traitorous part of his heart keeps insisting that Blaine’s going to call any minute. He has to. Even if they’re just _bros_ , wouldn’t Blaine call?

In the end, though, his pride is no match for his worry, so he scrolls down to Blaine’s name (under _z_Blaine_ , so he won’t see it every time he opens his contact list) and makes the call himself. As the phone rings, he can see the McKinley lunchroom in his head. He wonders where Blaine’s sitting, what he’s eating, who he’s with. They’d always eaten lunch together.

“Hello?”

Blaine sounds so familiar, so reassuringly the same, that Kurt has to smile. “Blaine. How are you? How are you doing?”

“Oh. I’m fine. Really. It was pretty intense, but no one got hurt, so that’s a relief, anyhow.”

“I can’t even imagine. You must have been terrified.”

“Everyone knew what to do; all those lockdown drills turned out to be useful after all. Mr Schuester and Coach Beiste were both in the choir room with us, so we had a lot of support in there. Artie practically wanted to make a documentary about it.” Blaine’s got a practiced spin on the story already, his voice falling into the smooth cadences of calm and reassurance like he’s done it for twenty people already. Probably he has: he’s got a preposterous number of cousins.

Kurt remembers being let past that facade, and he hates Blaine a little for putting it up again, thinking it’ll fool him. “I’m so glad,” he says.

“You don’t have to worry about me, Kurt.”

“I do, though.”

“Thank you.” Blaine’s voice is warm and perfectly polished. Utterly convincing if you don’t know any better.

“If you need to talk...”

“I know. But I’m fine. Really. And hey, you’ll like this — Sam got Brittany a new cat.”

Kurt lets himself be managed, lets Blaine lead the conversation to cats and astronomy and cheerleading until the actual reason why he called is lost in the chatter. His hand is still sweatily clamped around the cool metal of his phone. “Okay,” he says after a while. “I’m guessing the bell’s going to ring soon, so...”

“Oh, wow, look at the time,” Blaine says. “I really should go. Talk to you soon!” And just like that, he’s gone.

Kurt just sits on the couch, staring at the phone like it could tell him anything, and then he goes into the kitchen to find some lunch. Stress eating is the best kind. Rachel is in there, gulping down some foul quinoa salad.

“So, that was Blaine on the phone?” she asks. Subtlety has never been Rachel’s strong suit.

“Yes. He’s _fine_.” Kurt slams a pot onto the stove and pulls a container of his homemade vegetable soup out of the freezer. He runs it under the hottest water he can bear until the soup can be banged out into the pot, and then he rummages through the cooking implements for a ladle.

“The noise is not helping,” says Rachel.

“Helping me plenty,” he mutters.

“What are you so upset about? You just said he was fine.”

“He’s ‘fine.’” Kurt does the airquotes as viciously as he can. “Which means he’s not fine at all, but he feels obligated to put on a happy face about it.”

Rachel looks puzzled, like the idea of repressing an emotion is completely alien to her. “Why would he do that?”

“It’s Blaine. It’s what he does.” The soup is starting to defrost a bit, so Kurt turns it with the ladle. He’s trying to be patient with the soup and with his friend, but it’s hard. “He tells you that everything’s fine until -- ”

_You’ve been so emotional and weirdly sad. Please stop pretending that there’s nothing wrong._

“He doesn’t know how to talk about things,” Kurt concludes.

“That is sort of ironic, if you think about it. Because you’re a great talker: I’ve always thought so.”

“How is that ironic? Don’t answer that.” Kurt stirs the soup again. “I could always tell if something was wrong when we were at McKinley. I mean, not always. But usually. Eventually. He would talk to me about things.”

_I really miss you, a lot._

“Rachel? Do you think I’m easy to talk to?”

Rachel swallows down her mouthful of quinoa. “Well, that’s never really stopped me either way. Why do you ask?”

Kurt shakes his head. “No reason, really.” He looks down at what was going to be his lunch and thinks back to the fall. Maybe it was a perfect storm: Blaine’s silence and his excited chatter. Maybe there was no way they could have gotten out of it alive.

He turns off the stove and goes back into the living room for his phone. Blaine picks up on the first ring.

“Kurt, I’ve got class in like five seconds.”

“I know. Just let me say this, okay?”

He can hear the inhale as Blaine braces himself. “Okay.”

“I know you don’t want to talk about it, and that’s fine. I think all that repression is going to give you an aneurysm but it’s your choice, right? But if you ever do want to talk about what happened, or — or something else, I want you to know I’m here to listen. I am."

“All right.” Blaine sounds unconvinced.

“I know I'm hard to reach — my schedule's a mess — but I'll share my calendar with you again if you want.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t want you to think you can’t talk to me. Everyone needs someone to talk to, right?”

“I have other friends. And my parents. I’m not repressing anything. You make me sound like —”

“I think I’m allowed to worry —”

“I’m _fine_ , Kurt.”

“Sure.” And maybe it’s the way Blaine says his name, like it’s nothing special, but Kurt’s heart is aching.

“Why are you doing this?” Blaine asks. He sounds tired.

Kurt clutches his phone a little tighter. He can barely speak, but if he doesn’t say it now, he might not get another chance. “Blaine. I was so scared.”

“Oh,” Blaine says. There’s a pause before he adds, “Yeah. Me too.”

Something opens up in Kurt’s chest, and he can breathe again. Back at McKinley, the school bell rings.

“I’ll call you later,” Blaine says softly.

“I’ll be here,” says Kurt, and he will.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the Nanci Griffith song "Talk to Me While I'm Listening."
> 
> The remembered, italicized dialogue comes from "The Break Up."


End file.
